The first 15 minutes or so of Paolo Sorrentino’s The Great Beauty is one of year’s most daring expressions of cinema’s intoxicating possibilities. The opening shot starts inside a cannon, with the camera tracking out of it and up and away, like a cannonball, and we get through an entire reel before it settles down. Restless but elegant, it drifts in and around Rome’s ancient … [Read more...]
A roomful of beauty at the Four Arts
They say happiness is a state of mind you can command at any time and place. The same thing can be said about beauty. We decide, in a matter of seconds, whether or not something is beautiful. In a room full of porcelain-skin ladies and velvety, satin dresses, this is not a hard decision to make. The Society of the Four Arts has put together such a room for its ongoing … [Read more...]
‘Beauty’ team lightens, rethinks Broadway favorite
On the second day of 2011, Disney’s The Lion King surpassed Beauty and the Beast to become the seventh longest-running show ever on Broadway. That takes the media conglomerate’s first venture in the high-risk world of New York commercial theater down a peg, but when you run 5,461 performances -- more than 13 years -- you can console yourselves that you created a much-beloved … [Read more...]